@ChrisMayLA6 So its an old topic- advertise & recruit for part time and job share software roles. Many SW roles have been harsh & abusive even for men - eg games industry - overnight shifts competive cost saving always available environments and then think of what women are expected to do in society everyday and their aspirations for a good quality of life. Women want a well paid meaningful job with manageable hours -men pushed women out of these, as there arent enough to go round..

@ChrisMayLA6 The encouragement needs to start from an early age. Little boys of my generation got Amigas and Commodore 64s and learned coding from typing in the code from magazines, fixing bugs. In some cases from the age of five.

Whereas many women had obstacles put in their way, or had never had that grounding as their parents had no idea.

Girls need that encouragement and support. But STEM education is still highly gendered.

@ChrisMayLA6 and we need to destroy the structures that drive women out of computing later in their careers https://www.codio.com/blog/taking-a-closer-look-at-the-pipeline-problem

@ChrisMayLA6 the words you're looking for are "women and girls" *not* females. Female is an adjective and needs a noun to go with it.

But more than the grammar police side. The use of "females" like this has a dark history in medical experimentation on black slave women and the "scientist" doing it didn't want to humanise his test subjects by calling them women.

And of course it sounds like a Ferenghi from stat trek...

Female engineer. Female scientist. All fine. Females, not good.

@ChrisMayLA6 this problem has been around for decades. When I did my Computer Science degree in 1970s 5 women and 15 men completed it. There were 2 female DBAs in my team and 5 men. One women in the Comms team. Maybe the issue is that IT is viewed as a Science when it isn't really. Certainly I was expected to have a Maths Higher to get in and most students had Physics.